Allentown schools Superintendent Russell Mayo acknowledged significant overlap between the Professional Careers Institute and the LVenture proposal, although not Executive Academy.

But a charter school must demonstrate an innovative approach that differs from the district's approach, and Mayo said that was lacking because the district had already been developing its new high school since last spring.

"We've been looking at this well before we knew anything about charter submissions for this year," Mayo said.

Lysek countered that the rejection of the charters, despite the district espousing the need for similar programs, shows the move was made for financial reasons, not educational ones.

Lysek intends to resubmit his application with amendments based on the school board's feedback, and said he will appeal to the state if the board rejects it again.

Mark Lang, executive director of Charter Partners Institute, which proposed the LVenture school, may take a different approach and instead partner with the district in developing its new school.

Lang said he is less concerned about opening a charter school than with making fundamental educational reforms in Allentown. A partnership would help foster his goals, he said.

"Several people have said to me they'd much prefer to do it that way because they'd like to avoid the rancor of the charter school debate," he said. "It would be much better to change the current system than to create a system on the side."

Mayo said district officials have had high-level talks with Lang about possibly partnering together, and that Charter Partners Institute may be able to help them with establishing relationships with businesses.

"But we're not having trouble building business alliances ourselves," he said. "We've been around over 100 years, so we've already established ourselves and our programs. I've already met with I don't know how many CEOs and business officials to talk about this."

The district's Professional Careers Institute seeks a smaller learning environment, where the students take a more active role in the classroom with a heavy focus on internships, job-shadowing opportunities and off-site projects with industry mentors.

Lang said LVenture's proposal was similar, with a focus on giving students ownership over their learning, with the teacher as more of a facilitator. It also called for a more competency-based assessment over traditional grading.

Lysek said Executive Academy had significant overlap as well, including a focus on 21st century skills, project-based learning, career tracks and leadership and preparing students for the workforce.

But Mayo said the board rejected Executive Academy because a full curriculum was not submitted, so even if the concepts are similar, it is impossible to tell how similar the charter is to the Professional Careers Institute.

Alleged contradiction

Lysek said the district claimed the charter proposals were not innovative because the services were already provided. But he said the district contradicts that claim by advocating the need for the new school.

"They're showing deficiency and weakness that we're showing as a strength in our proposal," he said. "That's why I was scratching my head when I heard their presentation. This is only going to help us (on appeal)."

School board President Robert Smith Jr. denied Lysek's claims that the votes were financially motivated. He said the board depended upon advice from counsel, which pointed out Executive Academy's lack of a curriculum.

"It if comes back with a curriculum, we're probably going to OK that, because I don't see how you can't if everything else if fine and you come back with a curriculum," he said.

While Lang said he would like to partner with the district, he has concerns about doing it in-house rather than as a separately affiliated school.

Lang said the district will inevitably receive criticism for such a fundamental change to the normal classroom experience and hear fears they could be more susceptible to pressure to revert to the old ways than a charter would.

"When people start complaining about it, are they going to say, 'Well, we need to back down or water it down?'" Lang said. "I don't want to do that. We need to be really determined to show we have what it takes to make this change."

Smith noted the Professional Careers Institute proposal is still in the early stages and doesn't even have a building yet. He expressed concerns about how much it will ultimately cost, given that the district faces a $10.6 million budget gap and is proposing 100 layoffs.